


How to Destroy Your Enemies in Six Easy Steps

by draculard



Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Humor, M/M, Post-Finale, Pre-Slash, Stuncuffs, reluctant allies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:41:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28374054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draculard/pseuds/draculard
Summary: They say the best way to get rid of an enemy is to make him your friend.In Din's experience, it's easier just to shoot them.
Relationships: Din Djarin/Moff Gideon
Comments: 8
Kudos: 41





	How to Destroy Your Enemies in Six Easy Steps

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on tumblr, I'm draculard there too

They’ve been cuffed together at the wrist and left outside in the rain for exactly five minutes when Gideon interrupts Din’s escape attempt to say, “This isn’t exactly my idea of a good time.”

Din swears under his breath, struggling to twist his wrist at the right angle so he can pick the outsized magnacuffs keeping his hands locked to Gideon’s. It’s more difficult than he’d thought it would be — his vast experience with picking locks has given him a false sense of security, and he’s quickly learning that picking the lock on one man’s pair of cuffs is a whole lot simpler than picking the lock on a pair shared by two. 

Especially when Gideon would rather complain than help.

“You’d better hurry,” he says to Din, his amusement barely concealed beneath a tone of boredom. “If someone spots us here—”

“I know, I _know_ ,” Din says. Just his luck that things would go wrong so badly here, in Imperial territory — where anyone who might rescue them would also be inclined to take Gideon off Din’s hands and probably see fit to give him (just off the top of Din’s head) a new ship, a whole battalion of loyal soldiers, plans to a new Death Star, even a new Grogu, if they happen to have one lying around.

With a huff of exasperation, Din edges his heels into the mud for leverage and then bodily heaves himself forward, launching Gideon off the ground and onto Din’s back. Hunched forward like this, Din can at least use Gideon’s body as a shield against the rain — though there’s a price to be paid for that, in that he’s now stuck supporting Gideon’s bodyweight.

And listening to more grumbles.

“This is exactly what the Imperial recruiters promised,” Gideon mutters under his breath. “See the galaxy. Adventure awaits! You, too, can someday serve as an umbrella for a maskless Mandalorian.”

Din shakes water out of his eyes and glances at his helmet, lying face-down and dented in the mud several meters away. “You don’t have to rub it in,” he says.

“ _You_ don’t have to use me as an umbrella,” Gideon replies, “and yet here we are.”

With gravity pressing Gideon’s hands against Din’s spine, there’s now a tiny fraction of space between the cuffs and Gideon’s wrist, and Din takes advantage of that at once. He twists the durasteel pin until the point of it is wedged firmly against the magnacuff’s plastic casing; at this angle, he can’t get enough leverage to make a hole, but he can at least use Gideon’s bodyweight to drive the cuffs down against the pin. Gradually — after several repositionings — he has that hole made, and without warning Gideon first, Din abruptly sits back up and hurls the other man back onto his ass in the mud.

“That’s fine,” Gideon says. 

“Put your hands in the mud,” says Din, trying to shimmy down so that his back is against the ground.

“Tailbones — who needs them?” Gideon continues. "Actually, I _like_ to be manhandled, so this is a win for both—"

“ _Put your hands in the mud_ ,” Din says again.

“Why?” Gideon shoots back. He digs his heels into the ground and leans back against Din, refusing to let him lie down. “I know how magnacuffs work, Mandalorian. You get mud in the coils and they’ll snap right open. And then what happens? You slap your stuncuffs back onto my wrists and we return to business as usual?”

“How about we break the cuffs first— ” Din starts.

“Who keeps a prisoner in stuncuffs every hour of the day, honestly?” Gideon says. “Do you enjoy the supervised bathroom breaks? Because I’m starting to suspect you do. Continuous bondage is, by the way, a direct violation of the Galactic Accords of Peace — not that I expect a lawless cultist such as yourself to care—”

“You kept a _baby_ in stuncuffs,” says Din, his patience eroding fast. He throws his head back, hoping that the crash of his skull against Gideon’s will at least stun him long enough for Din to work some mud into the cuffs, but Gideon seems to sense the blow and bows his head forward just in time.

“I’ll help you on one condition,” Gideon says.

“You’re not in a position to bargain.”

“Oh, please,” says Gideon. (Din has to admit, that last sentence _was_ kind of bullshit; Gideon hasn’t been in a bargaining situation this good since he had the Darksaber hovering over Grogu’s head.) “Here’s my condition: no more stuncuffs.”

Din tries once again — futilely — to slam himself to the ground, but Gideon remains steadfast; his ab strength, Din thinks, must be _phenomenal_. 

“If I let you go free without stuncuffs,” Din says, “you’ll make a break for the nearest spaceport and sell my ass to the Remnant within an hour.”

“I wouldn’t sell your ass for the galaxy,” says Gideon crisply — and this sentence throws Din so off-guard that he completely forgets about his struggle to get mud in the magnacuffs. For a moment, he’s hyper-aware of the warm, hard planes of Gideon’s back against his, their clothing soaked through with rain. “Largely because you don’t warrant the type of price tag I need for a decent ship,” Gideon continues, ruining the moment (and calming down Din’s racing heart a little).

“I’m supposed to believe you’ll just be a good little boy and tag along wherever I go out of, what, good faith?” Din asks.

“Reframe the narrative, Mandalorian,” says Gideon patiently. “I’m not your prisoner, and you’re not my captor.”

News to Din.

“We’re _partners_ ,” Gideon says. He flexes his wrists, taps the cuffs against Din’s ass in a move Din desperately tells himself is innocent — it’s just that with their current position, there’s no other part of his body that Gideon can reach. “Neither of us stands a chance in hell of getting that little big-eared bastard—”

“ _Grogu_ ,” Din bites out. 

“—back from Skywalker,” says Gideon as if Din hadn’t interrupted. “Where does that leave us? Do you plan on rescuing the little—”

Din tenses, silently threatening to use Gideon as an umbrella again.

“—tyke?” Gideon hastily corrects himself. “Or do you plan on leaving him with Skywalker?”

The tension fades a little. Against Din’s will, the question gets to him. He feels his heart twist in his chest.

“It’s where he belongs,” he says through numb lips.

“Well, however you want to sell it to yourself,” says Gideon. “The point is, I’m not going after him either — I don’t fancy the concept of my plasma-burned head on Skywalker’s wall. That means there’s no longer any conflict between your goals and mine, Mandalorian. We both want to get out of here. We both need money. We both need a ship. And you’ll look a great deal more conspicuous with a cuffed Imperial at your side, might I add.”

Din lets silence grow between them as he digests Gideon’s words. It’s not exactly convincing stuff — he’d bet his best beskar that Gideon will betray him the first chance he gets. But that last part carries a lot of weight — on this planet, at least, Din can’t afford to be seen as anti-Imperial. The question now is whether or not uncuffing Gideon is worth the risk if Gideon decides to run and tell on him to the nearest authority.

“Yes?” Gideon prompts. “No? This rainwater isn’t exactly crystal-clean, you know. They used to mine doonium here; the atmosphere is full of nasty chemicals.”

Din sighs. “You even _think_ about taking off on me, and my finger will be on the whistling bird trigger faster than you can say ‘Palpatine.’”

“How romantic of you,” says Gideon drily. “You could always just _ask_ me to stay if it means that much to you.”

Before Din can get a handle on his temper and think of a response, Gideon goes slack against him, letting their hands drop down toward the mud. The angle of their wrists changes briefly, and for a moment, Din can feel hard, warm muscle beneath Gideon’s saturated clothes. Only when Gideon shifts against him does he realize he’s touching Gideon’s ass.

Before he can process that in a healthy non-brain-breaking manner, the mud seeps in through the hole he made and the cuffs pop open. Din doesn’t react immediately, his cheeks stinging with inexplicable heat, and as a result, Gideon springs to his feet long before Din does. But instead of running — like Din half-expects him to — Gideon just smooths the wrinkles out of his tunic, makes a big show out of stretching his fingers, and then circles Din and offers him his hand.

“You’re stuck with me now,” Gideon says. Then, tracking his eyes critically over Din’s exposed face, he curls his lip and adds, “Handsome.”

With a scowl, Din takes Gideon’s hand.


End file.
